The Last Movie (1971) User Reviews

the rabid, passionate and pretentious insides of Dennis Hopper '71

[Quinoa1984 · 6/10 · 13 July 2009]

A little credit is due (I guess): Dennis Hopper made it huge with Easy Rider, took his momentary carte blanche and made, for all intents and purposes, a movie he wanted to make. No holds barred is putting it lightly. It's like Hopper stumbled over the bars while on acid and just let the natives come around and stomp on it till the term 'hold' was soaked in alcohol and set on fire. It's cinematic anarchy that reigns with a sword of originality and hubris, and it's always coming right from Hopper's soul. The Last Movie, this said, is not a very 'good' movie. I'm not even sure it's "anything" of value. But it's surely one of those must-see "personal" movies all the same. For any film buff it's simply stunning - and I don't mean that fully as a compliment.

In a way I feel sorry for this production. Hopper did have a script, somewhere, and even had a writer with him as well, Stewart Stern, and the opening 25 minutes of the film is fractured but feels contained in its "meta-movie"-ness. It seems actually clear enough to follow: a film crew is in Peru filming a movie, a western, directed by none other than Samuel Fuller, and there's lots of intensity on the set and, at other times, weird vibrations in the off-hours. Hopper is a stuntman who works on the production, but once it ends he sticks around, and sees the Peruvians re-enacting the film that has just been made, only with "equipment" made of sticks and stones and other things. So far, so good, more or less, and, again, Samuel Fuller directing a movie in a movie! It can't get much cooler than this can it?

As it turns out, there is even more story and scenes that make sense, such as the romance (or lack thereof) between Hopper's Kansas cowboy and a Peruvian woman, Maria. These scenes, along with the rough seduction of Kansas to another woman who happens to wear a mink coat, rang true past the weird intentions of the film-making and into the personal for sure. Hopper in real life shouldn't matter in the course of the movie itself, but it is so self-reflexive on the end of making the meta-movie that it spills over into his real life with women (when you see it you'll understand). That, plus an allegorical storyline involving a foolish and failed attempt to go gold mining, seem to at least add emotional grounding for chunks of the picture.

And then, other times... it's just drivel, repetitive movements and rhythms and sudden things like "Scene Missing" cards. The problem that Hopper didn't see while editing, not while hopped up (no pun intended) on enough drugs to run a mega-pharmacy on the moon, is that the meta-movie qualities and his flourishes and mad jump cuts and time reversals and non-linear-ness don't always serve in favor of the actual story. There are certain moments and scenes that stand out wonderfully, and are even filmed and edited with scary precision and capturing the beauty of Peru (oh, and the opening gunfight as part of the movie-in-movie is amazing). Other times, it's just tricks and things, devices and obstacles that just add dead weight to the running time. It's non denying it's art, but is it always interesting? No. Sometimes, it just sticks out way too much as being "important" art, forced when at other times it could be natural and fitting for the already strange premise.

It's basically this: a very talented filmmaker (and for all of his ups and downs in his career, more downs than ups, not least of which the stigma that followed Hopper after he made this movie and didn't direct another for nine years) and an unlikely and electrifying actor, got loaded with all of the praise that someone like him didn't need, already cooking with loads of free-loader friends sticking too many hands in the creative pot, and, in the end, got in the way of himself. A lot of The Last Movie burns with raw energy and crude dramatic thrills. And the rest of the time, it just looks like it needed an editor, ONE editor that was sober to go along with the one other sober cadet on the production, the late-great Laszlo Kovacs as DoP. Alejandro Jodorowsky might be a kind of genius, but an editor for someone else's project he definitely isn't.

So should you see it? If it's available (it's hard to find) and you're willing (maybe do a coin toss) and you aren't expecting a John Ford movie (please don't), give it a shot. It's not an easy movie to defend, and I probably can't on a reasonable level. But as a personal statement of an artist on the edge, you could do worse (i.e. Southland Tales, the only thing that comes closest in ambition and faulty technique).

Not nearly as bad as I thought

[Jill-68 · 6/10 · 11 February 2001]

This movie isn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. But I don't know how to recommend it, or to whom. Do you like Dennis Hopper? Well, here he is, in almost every scene, and he never looked better. A beautiful face, the graceful cowboy. In fact, he appears so genuine in this film that I begin to realize what an acting job he was doing in Easy Rider. The scenery is haunting, and the movie has a poetic, lyrical rhythm....yet sometimes seems to go on too long, and the mind wanders....but I loved the feel of it, the primitive environment of the Peruvian village, the ever-present mud....contrasted with the lewd and crude wealthy Americans. And I happened to enjoy the home-movie aspects of this film, also. I delighted in picking out Dean Stockwell, Peter Fonda, John Phillip Law, etc. in the Hollywood on Location shots....I loved the spontaneity of the last scenes of dialogue....hell, I loved seeing Kris Kristofferson sitting on a rock singing Me & Bobby Magee....but would anyone else?

THE LAST GREAT NON-LINEAR MOVIE OF THE GOLDEN ERA

[noelartm · 7/10 · 15 April 2001]

The Last Movie would have been much better if Dennis Hopper hadn't let his hippie friends in the editing room. If the scenes where rearranged in a chronological order rather than being non-linear as it is, it would have stood a chance. However, the late 60's/early 70's (which many critics consider a "golden era" in filmmaking) was a time of experimentation, so if Hopper wanted to be self-indulgent he was in the right time at the right place. This is one title that begs to be recut. I would suggest a DVD with the original cut on one side and a new directors cut on the other. It would be fascinating to hear Hopper's audio commentary for further insights into where his mind was at the time (if he is capable of remembering, that is). By the way, this movie won first prize at the Venice Film Festival, so it wasn't the total failure (artisticly) that many critics have tried to make it out to be. I personally like it. The only other non-linear film I can think of from that era is HEAD(1968) which was far more succesful in terms of structure, or rather, non-structure. Had these films been commercially successful they might have revolutionized filmmaking, or at least spawned a non-linear film genre.

Build Your own Layers

[tedg · 17 April 2006]

Rarely does an opportunity come like this. I would like to encourage you to share it.

First, you should know that I am not representing this as a "good" movie. At the same time I am putting it on my list of "films you must see."

How can this be?

This thing fails to engage emotionally. It is unlike, say "Blue Velvet" which had both a visceral connection and an ephemerally complex narrative. Each reinforces the other way past the horizons we can see and understand, and you end up with a life altering experience. Most of the films on my "must see" list are like this.

But this is different and the missing factor is "The Other Side of the Wind." That movie is Orson Welles' last project, what he considered his greatest reach and most perfectly conceived. Welles' innovation was the exploration of multiple narrative techniques in the same weave, and then denoting them by distinct visual modes. Sort of a meta-"Peter and the Wolf," but with light.

We'll never see that movie and it is just as well because it is more life altering in the imagination than it ever could be in the real theater experience. While Welles was noodling around with windsides, he engaged every intelligent filmmaker then living, Godard, Huston, Franco and yes, Hopper.

Hopper is an absorber of ideas, not a generator and I believe his sponge absorbed some of that wind and that is what we have here.

There are a few clever notions:

—A movie as a re-enactment of a history that is a re-enactment of history of a movie.... all as religion.

—A man whose life is a bad movie, the guy behind the faux movie within, portrayed by someone whose life is a bad movie.

—A style of revealing that critics bluntly tag "nonlinear," though it is anything but. It just doesn't follow any timeline in a single reality but jumps realities.

Each of this represents a phenomenon I call folding and the three are themselves folded. That it doesn't emotionally engage us is a minor sin. That much of the construction was incompetently done by the drunk portrayed in it is less a sin than a charm.

Now. If you have clever moviewatching skills, you can add a fourth and fifth engine to this. Your own movie, of course. Any serious watcher will do this anyway, with any movie, but there is a seductive socket here for you to enter, much like the testy prostitute Kansas finds.

And of course, on the other side of your film, you have Welles'.

Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.

Seeking A Movie in Dennis Hopper's 'The Last Movie'

[TheFearmakers · 7/10 · 7 January 2019]

Within Dennis Hopper's infamous post-EASY RIDER flop, THE LAST MOVIE, are several movies with great potential had they been more fleshed-out - or if at least one took center stage...

These include an American-made cowboy picture being filmed in the main location of Peru where a stuntman dies, leading Hopper's character, Kansas, an extra and stuntman, caterer and acquirer of horses, to deal with the conscious-brooding aftermath... A psychotic local, after witnessing the Western being made, filming his own makeshift movie with bamboo cameras, actual punches pulled and real gunshots fired without blanks... A melancholy priest dealing with how his small town is altered by the Ugly American production, having come and gone with all its bogus yet influential, shoot-em-up violence... A gold-seeking expedition-plan between Hooper and his scruffy (future OUT OF THE BLUE) sidekick Don Gordon... Or our moping American film-worker falling in love with a beautiful Peruvian prostitute, Maria, played by natural beauty Stella Garcia...

The latter holds the most value since it's the only subplot with actual layers. which includes a pretty, classy, uptight yet progressive wife and daughter of a broom factory owner: the first awkwardly seduced by Hooper's Kansas in THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON scream queen Julie Adams and TV actress Donna Baccala as this non-linear, documentary-style odyssey goes from the gorgeously green and/or canyon-backed Peru exterior to a grainy night on the town, as an unrefined love triangle ensues: Hopper's lady-friend, Maria, hired her workmate... future COLUMBO victim Poupée Bocar as a bisexual nightclub singer... to entertain the ragtag group. And the following daytime scene involves a seemingly important conversation about Don Gordon's supposed gold mine followed by a quick, unrealized trek to find it - lasting less than most scenes would need to begin...

And on the movie-within-a-movie's set, since Hopper's Kansas is merely a caterer, having to provide alcohol to the selfish and raucous cast and crew while brooding outside of both the real and fake film's perimeter, it could be this LAST MOVIE is Hopper's way of not only being a dissociated artist but playing one in his own disassociated motion picture...

One telling moment and perhaps the best scene overall has Kansas demonstrating to the insanely-inspired Peruvian "director" how a beaten-up actor should throw a punch instead of continuing to bloody each other up. After which this director/dictator informs Kansas that his picture isn't fake like the Western that Kansas worked on...

Perhaps the askew logic is: Since those bamboo camera's aren't actually filming anything, real life isn't being captured like the kind of trickery... or "game" as the priest calls it... that inspired this local violent mockery. In other words, anything being recorded for posterity is futile and worthless compared to the real thing: just as Maria is more of a real person than Kansas. The problem is that both the actual-fake and fake-fake movies are all being filmed, and have to seem real to the audience. So Hopper's attempt to make a distinction between the two are somewhat futile in the end...

Either way, the misplaced yet strangely intriguing bedlam leads to a rushed third act that ultimately implodes upon itself... Especially in one scene as Hopper sits with the two leading Peruvian/Spanish characters... the priest and the loco-local director... and says, with finality, "To Hell with it!"

In actuality, this irritated exodus - after Kansas becomes a bloody martyr/captive of the Peruvians violent "passion play" (taking on the same expressive guilt he did concerning Jack Nicholson's EASY RIDER death during the acid trip) - is entirely redundant: Symbolically, Hopper crashes and departs from his own party while drowning with a life-preserver on...

If he had had more fun and action within the chaos instead of so much art-house distraction, we, the viewer, could have shared in that pandemonium as if it were ours as well as the director's. Experiencing a voyeuristic catastrophe that only a genius could make is more of an addictive and bizarre, awkwardly intriguing journey than an insightful or overall effective one. Thankfully, the timeless, legendary and groundbreaking road classic EASY RIDER had an actual destination, which was, within the story, tragically unfulfilled. So maybe, just maybe, THE LAST MOVIE was Hopper's next step after having nowhere left to go.

Crazy Labor of Love Finally Remastered

[TheFearmakers · 7/10 · 6 January 2019]

Within Dennis Hopper's infamous post-EASY RIDER flop, THE LAST MOVIE, are several movies with great potential had they been more fleshed-out - or if at least one took center stage...

These include an American-made cowboy picture being filmed in the main location of Peru where a stuntman dies, leading Hopper's character, Kansas, an extra and stuntman, caterer and acquirer of horses, to deal with the conscious-brooding aftermath... A psychotic local, after witnessing the Western being made, filming his own makeshift movie with bamboo cameras, actual punches pulled and real gunshots fired without blanks... A melancholy priest dealing with how his small town is altered by the Ugly American production, having come and gone with all its bogus yet influential, shoot-em-up violence... A gold-seeking expedition-plan between Hooper and his scruffy (future OUT OF THE BLUE) sidekick Don Gordon... Or our moping American film-worker falling in love with a beautiful Peruvian prostitute, Maria, played by natural beauty Stella Garcia...

The latter holds the most value since it's the only subplot with actual layers... Which includes a pretty, classy, uptight yet progressive wife and daughter of a broom factory owner: the first awkwardly seduced by Hooper's Kansas in THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON scream queen Julie Adams and TV actress Donna Baccala as this non-linear, documentary-style odyssey goes from the gorgeously green and/or canyon-backed Peru exterior to a grainy night on the town, as an unrefined love triangle ensues: Hopper's lady-friend, Maria, hired her workmate... future COLUMBO victim Poupée Bocar as a bisexual nightclub singer... to entertain the ragtag group. And the following daytime scene involves a seemingly important conversation about Don Gordon's supposed gold mine followed by a quick, unrealized trek to find it - lasting less than most scenes would need to begin...

What everything boils down to is Hopper's Kansas in love with a whore who's more real, capable, experienced and tough than he is. Meanwhile, the stunt man's supposedly pivotal death, mentioned in plot-summaries ranging from the back of VHS copies to the new Criterion Blu Ray, means close to nothing. In fact, we only catch one quick moment of his final plummet which, strangely enough, is shown after the movie-within-a-movie has already packed up and gone away...

Peter Fonda and other Hopper cohorts make cameos in the Western being shot by Sam Fuller while Kris Kristofferson provides a disjointed Roman Chorus of sorts, crooning his most famous ballad made famous by Janis Joplin, ME AND BOBBY MCGEE, and the likes of character-actor Severn Darden and lovely hippie chicks Toni Basil and Michelle Phillips glide in and out like in some deranged oasis, especially during nighttime parties where we possibly learn what this deliberately confusing film's really about...

Since Hopper's Kansas is merely a caterer, having to provide alcohol to the selfish and raucous cast and crew while brooding outside of both the real and fake film's perimeter, it could be this LAST MOVIE is Hopper's way of not only being a dissociated artist but playing one in his own disassociated motion picture...

One telling moment and perhaps the best scene overall has Kansas demonstrating to the insanely-inspired Peruvian "director" how a beaten-up actor should throw a punch instead of continuing to bloody each other up. After which this director/dictator informs Kansas that his picture isn't fake like the Western that Kansas worked on...

Perhaps the askew logic is: Since those bamboo camera's aren't actually filming anything, real life isn't being captured like the kind of trickery... or "game" as the priest calls it... that inspired this local violent mockery. In other words, anything being recorded for posterity is futile and worthless compared to the real thing: just as Maria is more of a real person than Kansas. The problem is that both the actual-fake and fake-fake movies are all being filmed, and have to seem real to the audience. So Hopper's attempt to make a distinction between the two are somewhat futile in the end...

Either way, the misplaced yet strangely intriguing bedlam leads to a rushed third act that ultimately implodes upon itself... Especially in one scene as Hopper sits with the two leading Peruvian/Spanish characters... the priest and the loco-local director... and says, with finality, "To Hell with it!"

Which would occur a few years later when Hopper's frantic hippie photographer in Francis Ford Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW says the world will end with a whimper, not a bang, followed by "I'm splitting, Jack" before vanishing from the scene, and movie, altogether. But it's one thing for a character to take off, and something else entirely when it's the film's own director...

If he had had more fun and action within the chaos instead of so much art-house distraction, we, the viewer, could have shared in that pandemonium as if it were ours as well as the director's. Experiencing a voyeuristic catastrophe that only a genius could make is more of an addictive and bizarre, awkwardly intriguing journey than an insightful or overall effective one. Thankfully, the timeless, legendary and groundbreaking road classic EASY RIDER had an actual destination, which was, within the story, tragically unfulfilled. So maybe, just maybe, THE LAST MOVIE was Hopper's next step after having nowhere left to go. (full review at cultfilmfreaks.com)

Where satire in and about movies meets an existential end....

[RJBurke1942 · 7/10 · 1 June 2019]

Is it merely coincidence that this, The Last Movie, was released in the same year as The Last Picture Show?

The two movies are not just poles apart from the narrative perspective. The former, under review here, is an episodic, disjointed, confused and confusing series of vignettes about the making of a western, quasi-documentary style, if you will. And followed by reflections (and even occasional white-on-black SCENE DELETED frames within the continuing story) by Kansas (Dennis Hopper), about making the movie and its effects upon the local populace; and finishing up with a personal search by Kansas for ... gold, literally and figuratively. This movie was awarded Best Film at Venice in 1971.

The latter you probably know of and have perhaps seen. At the 1972 Academy Awards, it won two Oscars for Best Supporting Actress (Cloris Leachman) and Best Supporting Actor (Ben Johnson); and was nominated for six other Oscars.

The interesting aspects of TLM are: the picturesque setting in the Peruvian mountains; the strong cast of well known actors - Hopper, Peter Fonda, Don Gordon, Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn, Julie Adams, an aging Rod Cameron, and even Kris Kristofferson in his first - very brief - screen appearance; the Peruvian locals who performed with studied, calm impassiveness; and the sound track containing various ballads and typical Peruvian music.

On the other hand, the plot - i.e., the sequence of events - is somewhat haphazard, to put it kindly. Although, as with all good narratives, the end actually begins and - almost - ends the story. In my opinion, the first part, about the final shootout of the western, is a sly satire of that genre, in a number of ways: the action scenes by the outlaws and others are ridiculously over-the-top; Sam Fuller (a real director of movies) is delightfully camp in the role of director; and the presence of a wanna-be local man as 'director' with local 'assistants' performing an outrageous parody of a filming crew must be seen to be fully appreciated. That is a brilliant touch by the screen writers and is sufficient, alone, for me to recommend this movie.

The story and movie fails, however, after the western movie is wrapped - in the first 20 minutes or so. After that, Kansas remains in the area and gets involved with the local talent, and other Americans, looking out for just a 'good time' with the usual feminine delights. And also, where he gets involved in a wild goose chase to find gold in them there hills and mountains. So, I'll leave it to you to find out exactly what happens to Kansas.

It's not a movie that can compare to The Last Picture Show, as I said. But it's still worth seeing as an example of the type of fakery that invades all our lives as we traverse our own existential search for identity, reality and security. Here, though, I think Dennis Hopper also succeeded in displaying much that is stupid, unsavory and false about the movie business.

So, see it if you can. Give it seven out of ten - mainly for Hopper's performance and his moxie for making the movie, in the first place. But, with graphic male and female nudity a few times, for adults only.

laughably incoherent

[mjneu59 · 3/10 · 30 November 2010]

Dennis Hopper's now notorious second feature fulfilled the promise of 'Easy Rider' by doing to his career what those Southern rednecks did to his character at the end of the earlier film: blasting it to an early grave. Given the disposition of its maker and the attitudes of his era it's not surprising the film took shape the way it did, but unlike the more unified mess of his debut feature (in retrospect a happy accident) this sophomore effort is merely chaotic: an ill-conceived, sloppily executed, helplessly edited riot of unintended laughs.

There's a germ of an idea here about the essential artifice of movie-making (in which the film itself finally disintegrates into random outtakes), but the director painted himself into a creative cul-de-sac by envisioning a project that had to fail in order to succeed. And fail it did, famously so, putting all of Hopper's drug-induced limitations on public display. Seen today, it's a fascinating example of professional self-destruction, and a laughable catalogue of hippie flotsam scraped from the bottom of the '60s barrel.

They Don't (Dare) Make 'em Like This Any More

[Krustallos · 9/10 · 12 January 2005]

It's difficult to see why people have such a hard time with this movie. Anyone who is interested in European art cinema of the '60's or even the novel since Joyce should have no trouble reading the film on at least some levels. Hopper's method here is to try and get inside the head, to put thought and memory on the screen, not just pictures.

Part of the problem may be the sheer complexity. There are probably enough ideas crammed in here for a dozen movies, and Hopper throws them all at us, often simultaneously. There's a story about American imperialism, there's a story about the artifice of film-making, there's a story about the way audiences view cinema, there's a Christ allegory wrapped up with a general sacrificial victim theme, a story about men and women, sex, money and power, there's Hopper's own story, the story of cinema itself, there's a satire of Hollywood conventions in general and the Western in particular, very notably there's a story about the Peruvian landscape, ravishingly shot by Laszlo Kovacs. There's even the story of Hopper's gofer lost in a society he doesn't understand if you want a simple narrative to hang on to. The film combines all these facets into a structure which can only be described as crystalline.

Devotees of "folding" should find plenty to occupy them here - there's the film about Hopper's character "Kansas", the film Sam Fuller is making, the villagers' "film", "The Last Movie" itself, an on-set home movie and probably several others besides.

Hopper gaily references (and steals from) everyone from Fellini and Godard to John Huston and Nicholas Ray, and of course goes bonkers in Peru well before Werner Herzog got around to it (and appropriates tribal culture in a strikingly similar way).

Definitely not a film to be missed by anyone interested in fractured narratives, postmodernism in film or the beautiful image. Vastly underrated and well worth its Venice prize, this is to "Easy Rider" what "Pulp Fiction" is to "Reservoir Dogs". Hopper as a director has never been better.

Could've been a South American Wicker Man

[vonnoosh · 7/10 · 9 November 2021]

I didn't know but I am not surprised to learn that over 40 hours of footage was shot in the making of this movie. Virtually any kind of movie can be made with that much material to work with. Screwball Comedy, Dark Comedy, Light Drama, Melodrama even Horror. It all depends how you edit it. Kind of like the manufactured plots in reality tv shows. It's all down to editing

What you get here is something that is sort of like a precursor to Wicker Man but in another part of the world and with different results. Locals mimic the making of a Western that was just shot in a strange ritualistic way. How we get to that point is a bit of a surprise because much of the story seems to be about one of the stars of the western staying on the location to settle with a local woman and discover gold mines. Then comes the bamboo film equipment.

If the goal was surrealism, Hopper nails it. If the goal was to be anything else specifically speaking, then that's still unclear. I was interested enough to keep watching and was surprised with how things shifted. The ending felt a little open ended. I can't call this a great movie but it has alot in it for me to want to revisit it and make more sense of it or a different sort of sense of it. Maybe my interpretation was a little off. Visually, it is fantastic. Peru is a genuinely beautiful country and very well captured here.

1971 - what WERE they smoking???

[rokcomx · 5/10 · 29 May 2010]

1971 saw some of the freakin' weirdest movies ever unleashed -- Carnal Knowledge and Klute (for those seeking sex), Bananas and Willy Wonka (for those on drugs), Clockwork Orange and 200 Motels (rock and roll!), and leave us not forget Harold and Maude (suicide played for laughs!), Pretty Maids All in a Row (funny serial killer?), Werewolves on Wheels ('nuff said), and Willard (for who can resist a lovable killer rat?).

The late Dennis Hopper went to his grave insisting that this homemade 1971 hallucination was his own Citizen Kane, even as the rest of the world filed it somewhere between Cecil B. Demented and Glenn or Glenda. Hopper felt this way even AFTER he was sober. Few have ever seen this flick, which is really a pity, as it deserves to be seen -- if only to marvel anew at whatever crazy sheeit they were smokin' in Hollywood back in '71 ----

Pretty audacious for an American film

[mobia · 8/10 · 7 August 2003]

Stunt double (Dennis Hopper) is on location in Peru making a Sam Fuller western and stays behind to hatch 'get rich quick' plans only to find himself starring in a ceremonial movie of the natives. The big difference is while Hollywood violence is fake but the camera equipment is real, here things are reversed: the camera equipment is fake (fireworks make the camera reels spin) but the violence is real. Crazy imaginative production frequently goes off on hallucinatory tangents and the editing is creative to say the least. Easily the most interesting of Hopper's films. Alexandro Jodorowsky is rumored to have helped with the massive editing job.

So happy to finally own this!

[BandSAboutMovies · 7/10 · 17 November 2018]

When I was really young, I loved to visit the high school library that my uncle ran. Today, it would probably seem small, but in my ten-year-old mind, it was huge. That said -- now that I'm a grown-up, I realize just how many cool books my uncle would hide in his library for kids to find. There were collections of EC Comics and stuff like The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (And How They Got That Way) by Harry Medved, Randy Dreyfuss and Michael Medved.

When I first read that book, back when I was twelve, I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever laid my eyes upon. I got all of their Golden Turkey Awards books and loved the quasi-documentary It Came from Hollywood But as I grew older, I began to realize that many of the movies that were decried by these books -- such as the work of Ed Wood, for example -- held artistic merit that superseded anyone making light of them.

Reviewing some of The Fifty Worst Films today, I realize how many of them I actually enjoy, like Airport '75, the Matt Helm movie The Ambushers, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Godzilla vs. Hedorah and Valley of the Dolls. One of the films on this list really fascinated me, though: Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie.

After Easy Rider became a surprise success, Dennis Hopper could do anything he wanted. And sure, maybe what he wanted to do was take near inhuman levels of drugs. But let's be serious -- he had the soul of an artist and $1 million dollars from Universal bankrolling him, as well as the understanding that he had free rein with little to no intervention from the studio. After all, that had paid off with Easy Rider, right? And Hopper had been trying to get this movie made since he was in Rebel Without a Cause.

For most of 1970, Hopper and his crew shot hours upon hours of footage. And then Hopper went to New Mexico and started editing. And drinking. And doing drugs. And editing. And doing more drugs. I'm not exaggerating -- just watch Lawrence Schiller and L.M. Kit Carson's (yes, the same person who wrote The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) The American Dreamer.

Hopper had a cut that was pretty conventional. In the Alex Cox documentary Scene Missing, Alejandro Jodorowsky watched this cut and mocked Hopper, telling him that he had the opportunity to create true art. The visionary director would give Hopper a cut of the film, which he didn't use, but inspired him to craft the disjointed film that exists today. Another interesting fact: when this was first screened, the projectionist loudly said, "This movie has the right title, because it's going to be the last movie Universal ever makes." An enraged Hopper attacked the man, ending the screening. Hopper's career would take a long time to recover -- which we covered way back when we discussed Chainsaw 2.

After being a lost film for decades -- it had a short two week New York run and ran in some drive-ins as Chinchero -- Arbelos, a new boutique distributor focusing on the release of both new and restored classic art house titles, has re-released a 4K restoration of The Last Movie as their first official product.

The main premise of The Last Movie is that films are dangerous. You can interpret that metamorphically or physically, as the indigenous natives of Peru keep making a movie as a ritual long after the camera have stopped rolling. Hopper based this story on things he saw as he filmed the movie that would be the first of his many comebacks, The Sons of Katie Elder, where he saw locals do the very same thing.

Kansas (Hopper) has stayed behind in Peru after a movie ends shooting after an actor is killed in a stunt. A stuntman by trade, Kansas decides to quit making movies and stay behind with a Maria, local prostitute, in what feels like paradise.

There's a subplot with a couple who wants to buy a mine that doesn't have much to do with what happens next, but the woman in the couple is Julie Adams from Creature from the Black Lagoon. It really feels like it gets in the way of what the movie should be about. It also feels like Hopper shot so much footage that he could have edited twenty different movies out of the results.

Yet the real narrative of the film is that the natives have turned sticks into cameras and are filming a movie that will never exist filled with real violence. That's when The Last Movie begins to touch on the issues of reality versus fiction and how we perceive storytelling, as well as using behind the camera terminology as a storytelling tool.

Despite its downbeat theme, there's a true beauty to this film, made even more gorgeous by the painstaking restoration process the film has gone through. The final scenes of the wooden false cameras attempting in vain to film Kansas's sacrifice are breathtaking.

"It ends in fire. All my movies end in fire." Hopper may have said that about Easy Rider, but it's true about nearly everything he touched. This comes from Some Kind of Genius, a 30-minute one on one talk with Hopper that's also on the blu ray release. It's exactly the kind of extra I was hoping for -- a rambling discussion of career and art by Hopper. I wish I'd have the opportunity to speak to the man, someone I feel was a true icon of American art, but never will get the chance to. This doc gets me close.

An incoherent mess....

[planktonrules · 1/10 · 25 April 2011]

"The Last movie" appears to be rough footage strung together--possibly from several different incomplete films. The first portion just starts on the set of a Sam Fuller film and is very rough. Then, abruptly, this ends and one of the film crew (Dennis Hopper) stays behind in Peru and the rest of the film are his VERY random adventures. Some of the lovely things that occur to him or around him include: the locals making a 'movie' using fake equipment and real violence, some rich Americans showing up and acting like obnoxious capitalist swine (as they pay local women to have sex with each other as they watch), Hopper's prostitute girlfriend demanding a refrigerator (and many other things) even though they have no electricity, Hopper beating up this prostitute for no apparent reason, Hopper's friend (Don Gordon) talking on and on and on about his gold mine and several other irrelevant plot elements--none of which make up a coherent whole.

The only reason I saw this film is that I have a crazy quest to see all of the films from the Harry Medved book "The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time" and this is one of the last five I have yet to see. In some cases, the films in the book were laughably bad--such as "Robot Monster" or "Santa Claus Versus the, Martians". And others, such as this film, are just plain bad--and not in a fun or enjoyable way. And yet, like some of these truly terrible films, some people find great significance and meaning in the film. I read through the reviews for "The Last Movie" and it sounded like a Fellini or Truffaut film--full of brilliance and insight. All I saw was a lot of very rough and poorly filmed footage strung together rather incoherently because the people making the film were reported very stoned throughout the production--which is very, very easy to believe. Instead of a film, this is more like bits and pieces of many films thrown together rather randomly--and in the process, some actors embarrassed themselves--such as Gordon and Julia Adams (of "The Creature From the Black Lagoon" fame).

The film is an incoherent mess--randomly edited, with long and pointless musical interludes that were intended as deep and meaningful, completely amateur acting throughout and no discernible script. A few of the many plot elements COULD have been the basis for a good movie--such as the idea of Hollywood or American consumerism destroying a native culture. Too bad 2/3 of the budget was apparently spent on drugs instead of writers, directors and actors.

This may not be the very worst film I have ever seen, but it's sure in the running. I would say it was the film that wasted its budget more than any other and I would also say it was the most incoherent film I have seen--and with over 10000 reviews to my credit, that's saying a lot.

It's a shame, as Hopper's previous directorial project was "Easy Rider"--a film with amazing depth and insight. So, it's obvious that he could have done better and did do better when he was using less drugs.

A vastly underrated film.

[jesse3 · 4 February 2004]

I watched this film twice. The second time I watched it I was simply trying to figure out why I liked it the first time---but like it I did. Usually I don't like this kind of film, because I think they're pretentious. (NORTHFORK, as an example.) I think if ten people watched this film, those ten people would take ten different journeys and wind up at ten different destinations--so I can only describe what I felt---and it really was, for me, strangely enough, only a feeling.

For me it boils down to this: I'm from Oklahoma. During the early years, growing up in the great American heartland, the moral compass is very clear for most people. But the feeling, as you grow older (and migrate away from your roots), that with each season something precious is slowly draining away, and that things you care deeply about become like sand dunes that change shape and form with every rising sun---and there seem to be a progressive sense of loss---loss of the north star, reference points, meaningful trails in your life, until one day you are forced to stop and ask yourself, "Where am I, and what the hell do I care about anymore?" That's when you go to the pound and adopt a dog. I'm sure that my response to the film had absolutely nothing to do with what the authors intended, but I liked the film very much, and can't help but feel that this film is vastly underrated and was never given a fair chance.

The Last Movie is Many Movies

[cultfilmfreaksdotcom · 7/10 · 6 January 2019]

Within Dennis Hopper's infamous post-EASY RIDER flop, THE LAST MOVIE, are several movies with great potential had they been more fleshed-out - or if at least one took center stage...

These include an American-made cowboy picture being filmed in the main location of Peru where a stuntman dies, leading Hopper's character, Kansas, an extra and stuntman, caterer and acquirer of horses, to deal with the conscious-brooding aftermath...

A psychotic local, after witnessing the Western being made, filming his own makeshift movie with bamboo cameras, actual punches pulled and real gunshots fired without blanks...

A melancholy priest dealing with how his small town is altered by the Ugly American production, having come and gone with all its bogus yet influential, shoot-em-up violence...

A gold-seeking expedition-plan between Hooper and his scruffy (future OUT OF THE BLUE) sidekick Don Gordon...

Or our moping American film-worker falling in love with a beautiful Peruvian prostitute, Maria, played by natural beauty Stella Garcia...

The latter holds the most value since it's the only subplot with actual layers: Which includes a pretty, classy, uptight yet progressive wife and daughter of a broom factory owner: the first awkwardly seduced by Hooper's Kansas in THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON scream queen Julie Adams and TV actress Donna Baccala as this non-linear, documentary-style odyssey goes from the gorgeously green and/or canyon-backed Peru exterior to a grainy night on the town, as an unrefined love triangle ensues...

Hopper's lady-friend, Maria, hired her workmate... future COLUMBO victim Poupée Bocar as a bisexual nightclub singer... to entertain the ragtag group. And the following daytime scene involves a seemingly important conversation about Don Gordon's supposed gold mine followed by a quick, unrealized trek to find it - lasting less than most scenes would need to begin...

Which is the main problem with this extremely problematic LAST MOVIE, an anti-film that has the title appearing twenty-six minutes in as nothing really begins or ends but goes on a continuous forward motion - without the characters gaining insight or qualifying for the audience to take part in their eclectic quests.

But during the intentionally distracted psychedelic era, is all this surrealistic piecemeal intentional?

What everything boils down to is Hopper's Kansas in love with a whore who's more real, capable, experienced and tough than he is.

Meanwhile, the stunt man's supposedly pivotal death, mentioned in plot-summaries ranging from the back of VHS copies to the new Criterion Blu Ray, means close to nothing. In fact, we only catch one quick moment of his final plummet which, strangely enough, is shown after the movie-within-a-movie has already packed up and gone away...

Before which is a collage of blink-or-miss cameos of Hopper's cinematic cohorts ranging from John Phillip Law to Henry Jaglom to EASY RIDER Captain America himself, Peter Fonda to the b-Western's director played by real life gritty auteur Samuel Fuller...

Meanwhile, Kris Kristofferson provides a disjointed Roman Chorus of sorts, crooning his most famous ballad made famous by Janis Joplin, ME AND BOBBY MCGEE, and the likes of character-actor Severn Darden and lovely hippie chicks Toni Basil and Michelle Phillips glide in and out like in some deranged oasis, especially during nighttime parties where we possibly learn what this deliberately confusing film's really about...

Since Hopper's Kansas is merely a caterer, having to provide alcohol to the selfish and raucous cast and crew while brooding outside of both the real and fake film's perimeter, it could be this LAST MOVIE is Hopper's way of not only being a dissociated artist but playing one in his own disassociated motion picture...

One telling moment and perhaps the best scene overall has Kansas demonstrating to the insanely-inspired Peruvian "director" how a beaten-up "actor" should throw a punch instead of continuing to bloody each other up. After which this director/dictator informs Kansas that his picture isn't fake like the Western that Kansas worked on...

Perhaps the askew logic is: Since those bamboo camera's aren't actually filming anything, real life isn't being captured like the kind of trickery... or "game" as the priest calls it... that inspired this local violent mockery. In other words, anything being recorded for posterity is futile and worthless compared to the real thing: just as Maria is more of a real person than Kansas. The problem is that both the actual-fake and fake-fake movies are all being filmed, and have to seem real to the audience. So Hopper's attempt to make a distinction between the two are somewhat futile in the end...

Either way, the misplaced yet strangely intriguing bedlam leads to a rushed third act that ultimately implodes upon itself: Especially in one scene as Hopper sits with the two leading Peruvian/Spanish characters... the priest and the loco-local director... and says, with finality, "To Hell with it!"

Which would occur a few years later when Hopper's frantic hippie photographer in Francis Ford Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW says the world will end with a whimper, not a bang, followed by "I'm splitting, Jack" before vanishing from the scene, and movie, altogether. But it's one thing for a character to take off, and something else entirely when it's the film's own director...

In actuality, this irritated exodus, after Kansas becomes a bloody martyr/captive of the Peruvians violent "passion play" (taking on the same expressive guilt he did concerning Jack Nicholson's EASY RIDER death during the acid trip), is entirely redundant: Symbolically, Hopper crashes and departs from his own party while drowning with a life-preserver on...

If he had had more fun and action within the chaos instead of so much art-house distraction, we, the viewer, could have shared in that pandemonium as if it were ours as well as the director's: Experiencing a voyeuristic catastrophe that only a genius could make is more of an addictive and bizarre, awkwardly intriguing journey than an insightful or overall effective one...

Thankfully, the timeless, legendary and groundbreaking road classic EASY RIDER had an actual destination, which was, within the story, tragically unfulfilled. So maybe, just maybe, THE LAST MOVIE was Hopper's next step after having nowhere left to go. There is no death in the afterlife, after all.

NOT an easy ride, but...

[JasparLamarCrabb · 7/10 · 17 December 2012]

Do not get too invested in any storyline within Dennis Hopper's THE LAST MOVIE or you will be left entirely frustrated. Instead, enjoy it as the head trip that it is. Hopper's follow-up to EASY RIDER redefines self-indulgence and enters some other realm...one in which an artist has run amok with Universal Pictures money and brought together a lot of his friends to help out. Hopper plays Kansas, a stuntman working on a western in Peru who decides to stay on after the movies crew departs. He hooks up with local whore Stella Garcia, meets up with crusading priest Tomas Milian and attempts to help his friend find a gold mine. There's no real narrative, but plenty of beautiful imagery (thanks to cinematographer László Kovács) and some early 70s ballads on the soundtrack. Hopper & Garcia have great chemistry and it's fun to spot the likes of Severn Darden, Dean Stockwell, Michelle Phillips and Sylvia Miles peppered in cameos throughout. Samuel Fuller plays himself, directing the film within a film.

Frustrating waste of film and viewer's time could have been intriguing cult film

[mlraymond · 1/10 · 2 November 2006]

I doubt that there are many viewers who have actually seen this film. I saw it back in the early Seventies, having already read bad reviews of it, and therefore was prepared for a poor film. What I had not expected was something that is little more than a home movie with a fairly interesting drama beginning it, only to lose its way and end up being literally nothing. SPOILERS AHEAD:We are led to believe that Kansas will be literally crucified by the villagers as a literal Christ figure, and then that plot line disappears completely. There are a couple of sequences that indicate Hopper might want viewers to see Kansas as the bad guy, rather than the hero, but these are so underdeveloped as once again, to go nowhere. The actual ending of the movie is so vague, to put it mildly, we're not even sure if Kansas is supposed to have been killed. The next to last scene shows Hopper arguing with a couple of actors, as all three pass a bottle of booze back and forth between them. The two drunken actors laugh at Hopper when he tries to get them to finish the movie. Then follows the anticlimactic "ending", in which Kansas is seen staggering down a road and falls, presumably dead, presumably having been shot by some unseen assassin. Then the words " the end" appear, looking like they've been written on the film with a felt tip pen. And that's it. How Hopper persuaded the studio to release this thing I'll never know, but the sheer gall of a filmmaker to expect an audience to pay cash to see a movie with numerous intertitles stating " scene missing" is beyond belief. My biggest criticism is that potentially, there's an interesting story here that could have been made by competent filmmakers into a small but worthwhile film. There's the germ of a real movie lurking somewhere amongst all the wasted celluloid and ludicrous non-characters and pointless dialogue. The fact that Hopper overcame his drug and alcohol problems, and is now acclaimed as a genuine filmmaker, with some real movies to his credit, as well as some good acting in other people's movies, is something for him to be proud of, but this movie is not. A fascinating mess, worth seeing once out of sheer curiosity, but pretty dull and stupid. Only for fans of real turkeys like Ed Wood's movies.

The American Dreamer is an American Artist

[juniormike · 10/10 · 23 August 2007]

'Watched the film tonight again. After 20 years. EASY RIDER being among my three all-time favorites, I knew there would come the time, when I appreciate THE LAST MOVIE for what it really is - AN AWESOME EXPERIENCE, one of the most interesting films of the 70's and an important work of film art. Seems that time was tonight... :)

I loved it, at the same time it hurt. The film finally should be widely available, a dedicated SE DVD as for Fonda's HIRED HAND (that too is much much better than people thought years or decades ago... great film).

Hopper first went out to become the greatest actor in the world. He maybe could have been, but his character made it impossible for him to act after great early successes. He became a photographer. Could have been one of the greatest photo artists ever. He basically stopped because he became a film maker. He could have been right next to the most famous & successful directors in America. The faith of THE LAST MOVIE stopped him from that. YET, in all of these (and more) professions he became a top-player, an Icon, a forerunner and a master. An inspired creative human being, an enrichment to my life.

US movie industry leaves wreckage in Peru

[bs1 · 8/10 · 1 February 2000]

This is a great movie that explores the consequences of the raging US bull Movie Machine rampaging through the Peruvian countryside. If we were to look at the consequences of our egoistic society, we would be truly ashamed. Might isn't right, unless you are in early '40s Germany or mid '80s America. Looking at the truth is painful and not usually pleasant.

Probably the worst movie ever made

[davidmvining · 1/10 · 21 November 2019]

This might be the worst movie I've ever seen.

Dennis Hopper became famous with his directorial effort Easy Rider, which has, honestly, not aged particularly well. It's more of a cultural artifact than an example of great cinema. The financial success of the film was undeniable, though, and Hollywood decided to keep investing in the new golden boy. They didn't throw tons of money at him, but enough for him to take a crew to Peru where he built sets and filmed...something.

I think this may be the most distilled example of a movie conceived of, filmed, and edited while super high through the whole process.

It's obvious that the movie was massively changed in postproduction. The non-linear nature of the story is obviously not intentional, and the movie's filled with gaps both large and small. There are missing bits of scenes to simply establish what's going on, who's talking to whom, and then there's the gold expedition that starts and ends, but never actually happens.

I don't know if there's any way to actually break down this movie into narrative pieces, but there are images, some of them interesting. Like the group of natives who turn the filmmaking process into a sort of religious ceremony after the film crew in the movie packs up and goes back to America. That's sort of interesting, but Hopper does nothing with it beyond some vague conception that movies are replacing morality and religion, or something. The idea, what little there is of it, is hardly explored and has nothing to do with anything else.

The title of the movie is an issue as well. When releasing a movie that purports to break every convention (including basic sense) and calling it The Last Movie, there's a heavy implication that this thing is going to change movies forever. It implies a huge ambition to alter the face of cinema, but when the movie comes out as incoherent and unwatchable as this, it becomes a mark of shame. Hopper seemed to shoot so very high but ended up crashing very very low. That disconnect between the film's ambitions and its actual execution is really what gets me. Hopper simply wasn't talented enough to pull this off.

While watching, I kept thinking of Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind. Welles, who had spent decades making movies from scraps, decided to throw out convention and build a movie out of pieces he assembled over years (including bits with Hopper). Welles understood storytelling and filmmaking and was able to take the tiny little snippets he collected and assemble them into something cohesive. Hopper is not at that level, tried to do something similar, had no idea what he was doing, and fell completely flat. It reminds me of something a creative writing teaching once told me: If you're going to break rules, you have to understand them first.

Mildly Interesting but Technically It's Quite Awful

[Michael_Elliott · 12 August 2017]

The Last Movie (1971)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

If you knew nothing about THE LAST MOVIE and you just started watching it, it's highly unlikely by the time it was over you'd know what it was about. The film is an incoherent mess but apparently it was supposed to be about an extra (Dennis Hopper) filming a movie in Peru. After the movie wrapped the extra stays behind and falls in love with a local girl. This here leads to a land development deal as well as a group of local Indians using the movie sets to try and film a movie not knowing that movies are fake.

Say what? Hopper was on the highest of highs in Hollywood after the smashing success of EASY RIDER so he went to Peru to film this movie and it pretty much became a disaster. The drugs, the confusion, the fights and everything else that was going on pretty much ended Hopper's career as a director and the film was a financial disaster. Even to this day it's pretty hard to find unless you know where to pick up bootlegs. Is THE LAST MOVIE one of the worst films ever made? Technically speak it probably is.

For my money Roger Ebert's review of this is spot on. In it he talks about how films can be saved by the editor who can usually find enough material to make a story make sense. That's certainly not the case here. Apparently Hopper can back with hours upon hours worth of footage but as I said in my opening paragraph, if you didn't know what the film was about you certainly wouldn't be able to figure it out watching the movie. Nothing in it makes a bit of sense and scenes just happen for no reason and they end without a resolution. There are moments where the screen fades to all black and we just hear the dialogue. There are moments where "scene missing" appears and then there are scenes that appear to be out of place with the rest of the story.

A non-linear movie? That's what the supporters will tell you. If someone is able to watch this film and take something away from it, more power to them. I personally found this to be an incredibly bad movie and a film that's story is so bad with what material we're seeing that you can't help but call it technically awful. With that said, there's some entertainment value to get out of it because you just sit there wondering what was going on and how things ended up the way they did. You get several of Hopper's friends showing up including Peter Fonda, Julie Adams, Rod Cameron, Samuel Fuller, Michael Greene, Sylvia Miles, Tomas Millan, John Phillip Law, Kris Kristofferson, Dean Stockwell and Russ Tamblyn.

THE LAST MOVIE certainly deserves its notorious reputation in Hollywood's long history. It's easy to see why the film bombed when it was released and it's easy to see why no one has really tried to get it back into release. With the various behind-the-scenes battles you do have to wonder if there's perhaps more footage out there and perhaps a coherent film could be put together. With Hopper now gone it's hard to tell. THE LAST MOVIE is certainly a bizarre little number that I'm guessing only its director knows what it's meant to be.

Recently PREMIERED in New York! In 2006!

[daniel_quiles · 5/10 · 25 August 2006]

Having wanted to see this film for years, I finally got the chance last night at Anthology Film Archives in New York. And, as ludicrous as it is to "rate" a film like this, I give it a 5, as the film sits awkwardly between its lofty ambitions and appalling inability to live up to them.

Famously buried by Universal when Hopper refused to cut it into anything resembling a coherent narrative, -The Last Movie- is now probably more fun to watch as a document of the loony 60s/70s generation than as what it was intended to be, a Hollywood comrade of Godard, Herzog, or Jodorowsky. Tantalizingly visible for stretches (particularly the opening 30 minutes) in the final cut along with a more conventional narrative is a great avant-garde film about imperialism, Hollywood and the genre of the Western-- and with the use of local Indian populations, this places Hopper in -Herzog's- territory more than anyone else-- but what lamentably predominates far more often is ample filmic evidence of the intoxication and womanizing that render Hopper and his cronies as mainstream Hollywood as they come.

Almost unbearable are the absurdly monotonous stretches of glorious scenery set to insipid 60 faux-country ballads, and most especially the sequences of misogyny, which "American Dreamer" confirms as no accident. Hopper was transparently a monster in this regard.

What got me was the Godardian dimension of what was on screen, in the sense of all film being documentary. What the hell was going on during the filming of these different scenes? One actor is so drunk he can barely talk. The next is so coked up that it's like he's in a different film. Indians hold objects up to hide their faces from the camera-- a direction from Hopper, or their refusal to play along? The discombobulated editing, part-intelligent critique, part-drug-addled meltdown, only enhances the curiosity provoked by these odd glimpses into this bizarre, lost moment of studio-sponsored third-world hedonism-- which for me makes -The Last Movie- important, if not always pleasurable, viewing.

post acid Hollywood meets European avant garde

[markaerial · 10/10 · 7 June 2001]

The year is 1972. Hopper the over-achiever, has been given a loose rein and cowboy saddle to make his follow up to Easy Rider. The drug culture of the time has reached saturation point. The hallucinations have become serious. "We don't do that in the movies, we fake everything. I don't really hit the man!" Hopper as Kansas, the movie hired hand, tries to teach a Peruvian local how to punch on film. The game of movie production has gone too far. The locals use wicker-work movie equipment to simulate the film set, but what is 4 real is what is going on in front of the camera. ritual sex and murder. like Hollywood Babylon infront of the camera.

The years of editing with near-death experiences family break-ups and financial insanity, produces the most raw, hilarious, beta wave brain rush available on celluloid.

A few years earlier in Europe, Fellini made Nights of Cabiria, a film about a prostitute who 'lives the life' gets involved in feverish ceremonies and ends up living in a primative hole in the ground well beyond Rome's slums. Well this film and Hopper's have a lot in common.

The use of music in this film is incredible, Kris Kristofferson's Me and Bobby McGee(a trucking freedom song) is transposed onto a scene of Kansas trecking on his horse triumphantly to lines like "good for nuthin's good enough fo' me"

Re release this film RIGHT NOW !